For international students, writing a Reflective Essay must be a deep reflection on a specific topic. This piece of literature is different from other academic essays in that it focuses on thinking deeply and demonstrating the deeper impact or change that what you have learnt has had on you personally.
A Reflective Essay usually consists of three main parts: description, analysis, and decision-making or behaviour, which involve reflection on personal experience and reflection on what you have learned, respectively. Below are two common ways of understanding this, along with possible specific questions:
When reflecting on one’s own experience, one may encounter several of these problems:
1. events are elaborated in detail;
2. an explanation of the event;
3. an assessment of personal views and positions;
4. recalling past experiences and suggesting personal corrective strategies.
These core questions may need to be answered when reflecting on the learning process or on theoretical research on a particular topic:
1. a detailed account or theoretical description of what was learnt;
2. Answer questions about the content of the study;
3. learning how to apply and integrate new concepts to inform future practice.
Whenever and wherever possible, essays need to cover the three key points of description, analysis and decision-making or behaviour.
Reflective Essay Template Sentence Types
1. Introduction – General Analysis
● The most striking problem with this experience is that…
● Perhaps this phenomenon is mainly due to…
●I think the problem stems from…
2. Self-reflection
● At that time, I had a feeling…
● I didn’t think about it carefully at first…
● Later, I realised…
3. Linking Theory and Experience
● An idea helps to explain what happened at the time…
● Argyle (2001) argues that body language plays a crucial role in this situation…
● Theory X provides an in-depth analysis of my personal experience…
4. Linking experience and theory
● What I experienced… is closely related to the theory of Agier (2001)
● This experience vividly revealed… This experience vividly revealed…
● This experience for Haji (2019)
